Passenger Drones (Concept of Mine)

[Snark]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

Travel time, mostly while commuting (much harder) or for more irregular trips.  I've heard pilots describe private planes as a "time machine" that gets them there wildly faster (presumably without TSA waits).  The other thing that it enlarges the "places I can easily go" by several multiples (largely because increasing linear velocity increases the square of the area available, assuming you aren't on a thin island or something).

Except that:

• As time goes by, the need to actually go somewhere goes down.  Used to be that I had to go to work every day; now I can often work from home.  Used to be that any time I wanted anything, I had to go out shopping; now a couple of mouse clicks brings products to my door.
• How often does a typical person need to go somewhere that's a lot farther than a typical suburban commute?  Because flying cars wouldn't help with that-- or rather, they wouldn't help enough, compared with (say) putting in really good high-speed mass transit.

Having a flying car wouldn't help my daily commute.  For one thing, I wouldn't have a place to park it (or if I did, it would be super expensive).  Having a high-speed, high-frequency train would help my daily commute.

I suppose having a flying car would be nice for those occasions when I want to go somewhere more than 20 miles away... but I do that maybe once a month, at most?  My typical daily routine involves going places that a ground car is a godsend, but a flying car wouldn't really give any appreciable additional benefit.

Add to that the fact that ground cars are cheap.  Not pocket-change cheap, but cheap enough that a typical middle-class family with a mortgage can have two of 'em.  Am I going to spend $100,000 or more for a fancy flying car that is actually useful maybe once a month, at most?

Of course, not everyone has my particular lifestyle pattern... but I suspect that mine's pretty close to typical American.  Maybe if I lived in Montana or Nevada or somewhere, it would make sense-- but given that the overwhelming majority of Americans live either in cities or suburbia, it seems marginal to me.

Again, it comes down to cost.  How are you going to make something that combines the function of car, helicopter and airplane not cost as much as those things do?  Where's the convincing argument that technology is going to make that stuff that much cheaper?

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

Do people only buy cars instead of bicycles because sometimes it rains?

No, but when discussing travel radius, the ratio of "more" to "better" isn't linear.

A car is easily within reach of American middle-class income, and greatly expands the possibilities over a bicycle.  There's a pretty broad swath of possibility space within which a bicycle is not enough, but a car is.

A flying car would have broader possibilities, yes... but not that much more.  Especially if there are restricted zones where you can take off and land, which would make it practical only for longer trips-- otherwise ground transportation would actually be faster.

I just don't see a scenario where that many people would get enough benefit from traveling hundreds of miles a day instead of dozens to make it that much worthwhile-- especially since the cost would still be high per mile.  It's not as if you're going to be able to fly your automobiliplanicopter a couple of hundred miles for a dollar, or something.

[shynung]

I don't see why we shouldn't simply install an autopilot module into a Robinson R22, and be done with it.

It fits in a 9x9 m box, and can carry 2 people. Runs on gasoline (aviation-grade). Comes with leather seats.

Edited July 31, 2016 by shynung

[ZooNamedGames]

31 minutes ago, shynung said:

I don't see why we shouldn't simply install an autopilot module into a Robinson R22, and be done with it.

It fits in a 9x9 m box, and can carry 2 people. Runs on gasoline (aviation-grade). Comes with leather seats.

Chop the tail and it fits my initial design. Granted might need to be a drone rather than helicopter.

[shynung]

13 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Chop the tail and it fits my initial design. Granted might need to be a drone rather than helicopter.

You need the tail rotor for countering main-rotor-induced yaw (don't know the aviation term). Otherwise, the entire helicopter rotates in the opposite direction of the main rotor, which usually results in a crash.

The tail can be replaced by a fenestron or a NOTAR system.

Above: Kawasaki OH-1 reconnaissance helicopter. Lower: MD Helicopters 520N.

If the tail really needs to come off, using a pair of coaxial rotors is a viable design, however it requires a nested drive shaft.

Above: Berkut VL.

Edited July 31, 2016 by shynung

[ZooNamedGames]

Just now, shynung said:

You need the tail rotor for countering main-rotor-induced yaw (don't know the aviation term). Otherwise, the entire helicopter rotates in the opposite direction of the main rotor, which usually results in a crash.

The tail can be replaced by a fenestron or a NOTAR system.

Above: Kawasaki OH-1 reconnaissance helicopter. Lower: MD Helicopters 520N.

If the tail really needs to come off, using a pair of coaxial rotors is a viable design, however it requires a nested drive shaft.

Above: Berkut VL

I'm referring to a multi-prop design such as a drone with more than one prop negating the need for a tail and saving much more space.

[wumpus]

46 minutes ago, shynung said:

I don't see why we shouldn't simply install an autopilot module into a Robinson R22, and be done with it.

It fits in a 9x9 m box, and can carry 2 people. Runs on gasoline (aviation-grade). Comes with leather seats.

Ford plans to sell 500 "Ford GT" cars for $400,000 apiece (wiki claims the R22 is $285k, and sells ~25 a year).  Tis a weird planet we're on.

Another site lead me on a chase about autogyros.  They cost maybe half that of R22 helicopter, and have much less safety issues (you are never outside of the autogyro height).  The catch is that they still need an airport, and have all the speed and efficiency of a helicopter.  Basically they *are* the "flying car", but have little to no advantage over cars if there is a road where you want to go.

[Red Iron Crown]

52 minutes ago, shynung said:

I don't see why we shouldn't simply install an autopilot module into a Robinson R22, and be done with it.

<Snipped pic>

It fits in a 9x9 m box, and can carry 2 people. Runs on gasoline (aviation-grade). Comes with leather seats.

Going by the Wiki figures, it gets a fuel economy of 19L/100km while carrying at best two people. Compare to a small economy car (not even a hybrid), which gets about 6L/100km carrying five people. So more than triple the fuel use for much less capacity. Even ignoring the noise, safety, huge parking space, and quarter million dollar price tag, this is never going to be a mass market item suitable for replacing conventional cars. At best a niche item for the rich or for emergency/military services; i.e. exactly how we use helicopters already.

[shynung]

@ZooNamedGames Quadcopter designs are popular for small remote-controlled vehicles because the attitude of the vehicle can be controlled entirely by changing the torque applied to individual rotors. This means the rotors don't need to change pitches, and can be made as a single piece to save production costs. This control scheme works well in electric-motor-driven rotors, but pose additional challenges when applied to larger crafts.

Small helicopters (the size of an R22) typically don't have spaces for multiple engines underneath each rotor, and so gets by with having only one or two engines driving a shaft, which is connected to all rotors. This means changing torques applied to individual fixed-pitch rotors gets complicated really fast (needing clutches, transmission systems, and more), and often adds weight. This makes it cheaper to instead make the rotors themselves changes pitch, so that all rotor's RPM can simply follow the engine's, and still result in a controllable vehicle.

After that, it's a matter of complexity and cost; a single large collective/cyclic-pitch-adjustable rotor (and a smaller one for the tail) is less complex than 4 smaller pitch-adjustable rotors that can produce the same lift, and are cheaper as a result. A coaxial counter-rotating pitch-adjustable rotor may be more complex, but it doesn't need long drive shafts needed to drive the individual rotors of a quadcopter, needing only one nested drive shaft next to the engine, connected by bevel gears. A bit more complicated, but it can go a bit faster than the single-main-rotor-plus-tail-rotor configuration, and there's no risk of the tail rotor striking the ground.

And those are why larger helicopters have only 1 or 2 main rotors rather than 4; they're simpler and cheaper to produce.

10 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Ford plans to sell 500 "Ford GT" cars for $400,000 apiece (wiki claims the R22 is $285k, and sells ~25 a year).  Tis a weird planet we're on.

Another site lead me on a chase about autogyros.  They cost maybe half that of R22 helicopter, and have much less safety issues (you are never outside of the autogyro height).  The catch is that they still need an airport, and have all the speed and efficiency of a helicopter.  Basically they *are* the "flying car", but have little to no advantage over cars if there is a road where you want to go.

Another interesting take on flying cars is combining regular cars with paragliders.

This one is called the Parajet SkyRunner. It debuted in late 2013 at a price of $119k. It's about as literal as a flying car could get.

14 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Going by the Wiki figures, it gets a fuel economy of 19L/100km while carrying at best two people. Compare to a small economy car (not even a hybrid), which gets about 6L/100km carrying five people. So more than triple the fuel use for much less capacity. Even ignoring the noise, safety, huge parking space, and quarter million dollar price tag, this is never going to be a mass market item suitable for replacing conventional cars. At best a niche item for the rich or for emergency/military services; i.e. exactly how we use helicopters already.

Using fuel for vertical thrust is definitely bad for fuel economy. No way of going around it, I'm afraid.

That said, if I want a practical flying-car-like vehicle, the R22 is probably the first thing that comes to mind. If not that, the R44 or R66, which carries 4 and 6 people, respectively.

[ZooNamedGames]

1 minute ago, shynung said:

@ZooNamedGames Quadcopter designs are popular for small remote-controlled vehicles because the attitude of the vehicle can be controlled entirely by changing the torque applied to individual rotors. This means the rotors don't need to change pitches, and can be made as a single piece to save production costs. This control scheme works well in electric-motor-driven rotors, but pose additional challenges when applied to larger crafts.

Small helicopters (the size of an R22) typically don't have spaces for multiple engines underneath each rotor, and so gets by with having only one or two engines driving a shaft, which is connected to all rotors. This means changing torques applied to individual fixed-pitch rotors gets complicated really fast (needing clutches, transmission systems, and more), and often adds weight. This makes it cheaper to instead make the rotors themselves changes pitch, so that all rotor's RPM can simply follow the engine's, and still result in a controllable vehicle.

After that, it's a matter of complexity and cost; a single large collective/cyclic-pitch-adjustable rotor (and a smaller one for the tail) is less complex than 4 smaller pitch-adjustable rotors that can produce the same lift, and are cheaper as a result. A coaxial counter-rotating pitch-adjustable rotor may be more complex, but it doesn't need long drive shafts needed to drive the individual rotors of a quadcopter, needing only one nested drive shaft next to the engine, connected by bevel gears. A bit more complicated, but it can go a bit faster than the single-main-rotor-plus-tail-rotor configuration, and there's no risk of the tail rotor striking the ground.

We put a 747 into space on the side of a rocket. I think we can manage making this work.

I'm not engineer so I can't finagle the details, but I know it can work with the right design.

[Kryten]

2 minutes ago, shynung said:

This one is called the Parajet SkyRunner. It debuted in late 2013 at a price of $119k. It's about as literal as a flying car could get.

Not quite.

[adsii1970]

As someone that has done research into mass transportation (because of classes for the Ph.D.), there's a few unspoken "rules" - for lack of a better term, when it comes to the American mindset on transportation. Americans want dependable, easy-to-use, moderate cost, low maintenance, and stylish when it comes to personal transportation. When it comes to public transportation, Americans want cheap, easy-to-use, and convenient. With that said...

I am not sure if the American public is ready for a drone car for several reasons -

• It is not cost effective when it comes to maintenance and fuel, at least with the current concepts we've seen presented here.
• It is not easy to use - consider balanced cargoes, counterweights needed (or auto-adjusting thrust to compensate for unbalanced payloads - this adds complexity and expense to the project)
• Americans would demand creature comforts which adds weight (think of how much weight that cars have added just for air conditioning!)
• It would have to be able to replace the car completely - as in able to go from front door to the office and back!

And this is just a quick list.  There's other things that will have to be addressed and considered as well.

 

[shynung]

Just now, ZooNamedGames said:

We put a 747 into space on the side of a rocket. I think we can manage making this work.

I'm not engineer so I can't finagle the details, but I know it can work with the right design.

You mean the Space Shuttle Orbiter? That thing is an entirely different beast than your average 747, designed to run on wildly-different fuels, carry different things, and to endure different environments. It's just a 747-sized reusable payload fairing with a flight deck bolted on the front, rocket engines on the back, and a big fuel tank on the underside, lofted to orbit with the help of what are essentially scaled-up fireworks skyrockets.

And yes, there are already multiple designs that almost match the description of a passenger drone. The only things those designs haven't got yet is an advanced autopilot that can be instructed on where it is supposed to go, and automatically plans the flight path, contacts ATC (just like ground vehicles, airplanes have traffic regulations), and actually fly the vehicle there, avoiding any obstacles in the way. Current autopilots can fly to waypoints, can land/takeoff automatically, and can follow terrain, so we're not very far from that either.

In the end, passenger drones could be a reality. Not necessarily quadcopters, but self-flying passenger-carrying vehicles nevertheless. Still going to be pretty expensive, though.

13 minutes ago, Kryten said:

Not quite.

This thing can't actually fly on it's own (it has to be towed by a plane), but it flies nevertheless.

[Red Iron Crown]

12 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

We put a 747 into space on the side of a rocket. I think we can manage making this work.

I'm not engineer so I can't finagle the details, but I know it can work with the right design.

Perhaps you'd find something like the Moller SkyCar interesting, it uses four ducted fans instead of a quadrotor (quadrotors are not really practical for car sized craft, the rotors have too much angular momentum). Pic:

Granted, Paul Moller has been trying to get it working well for fifty years or more against the very objections to flying cars raised in this thread, but it fits the concept you seem to be suggesting.

[ZooNamedGames]

3 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Perhaps you'd find something like the Moller SkyCar interesting, it uses four ducted fans instead of a quadrotor (quadrotors are not really practical for car sized craft, the rotors have too much angular momentum). Pic:

Granted, Paul Moller has been trying to get it working well for fifty years or more against the very objections to flying cars raised in this thread, but it fits the concept you seem to be suggesting.

Works for me. Just need to get the costs down.

6 minutes ago, shynung said:

You mean the Space Shuttle Orbiter? That thing is an entirely different beast than your average 747, designed to run on wildly-different fuels, carry different things, and to endure different environments. It's just a 747-sized reusable payload fairing with a flight deck bolted on the front, rocket engines on the back, and a big fuel tank on the underside, lofted to orbit with the help of what are essentially scaled-up fireworks skyrockets.

And yes, there are already multiple designs that almost match the description of a passenger drone. The only things those designs haven't got yet is an advanced autopilot that can be instructed on where it is supposed to go, and automatically plans the flight path, contacts ATC (just like ground vehicles, airplanes have traffic regulations), and actually fly the vehicle there, avoiding any obstacles in the way. Current autopilots can fly to waypoints, can land/takeoff automatically, and can follow terrain, so we're not very far from that either.

In the end, passenger drones could be a reality. Not necessarily quadcopters, but self-flying passenger-carrying vehicles nevertheless. Still going to be pretty expensive, though.

This thing can't actually fly on it's own (it has to be towed by a plane), but it flies nevertheless.

I'm referring to the hyperbole everyone was using when the Space Shuttle was unveiled publically in it's final form. It was "747 on the side of a rocket" as people called it. Ofc a 747 and a powerless (engineless) aircraft function completely differently, hence why it was a hyperbole.

Point being; we can make it work and trust me, take a LONG look at the engineering. Sure it works and worked well for much longer than intended but it still spins some engineers heads as to some of the technical issues they encountered in designing it. If we can make it work; we can make a flying car that's cheap, safe and autonomous.

[shynung]

13 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Point being; we can make it work and trust me, take a LONG look at the engineering. Sure it works and worked well for much longer than intended but it still spins some engineers heads as to some of the technical issues they encountered in designing it. If we can make it work; we can make a flying car that's cheap, safe and autonomous.

I've never said the concept was unworkable. I merely pointed out that there are still plenty of roadblocks to a mass-produced flying drone car, among them the various technical and legal obstacles, and the fact that we haven't had a production-model autopilot system that's capable of maneuvering the vehicle from parking spot to parking spot, while being easy enough to be operated by the common man.

And even if it did come out, it may not look like what we think it would look like today. For all I know, the future drone car could be flying saucers, or just a common small helicopter with an autopilot module and no manual controls.

EDIT: Found the flying saucer.

This is a Moller Neuera, developed by the same person that made the Moller Skycar that Red Iron Crown found. Same engines, just more of them, in a different configuration.

Edited July 31, 2016 by shynung

[ZooNamedGames]

4 minutes ago, shynung said:

I've never said the concept was unworkable. I merely pointed out that there are still plenty of roadblocks to a mass-produced flying drone car, among them the various technical and legal obstacles, and the fact that we haven't had a production-model autopilot system that's capable of maneuvering the vehicle from parking spot to parking spot, while being easy enough to be operated by the common man.

And even if it did come out, it may not look like what we think it would look like today. For all I know, the future drone car could be flying saucers, or just a common small helicopter with an autopilot module and no manual controls.

There will always be legal issues. it's futile even considering surpassing them considering they will always be there.

Ofc. I just don't want it to be 40 years after I'm dead.

[shynung]

Just now, ZooNamedGames said:

There will always be legal issues. it's futile even considering surpassing them considering they will always be there.

Ofc. I just don't want it to be 40 years after I'm dead.

It very well may be. Fully autonomous flight from apron to apron (jumbo jet parking spots) isn't here yet, much less car-parking-spot to car-parking-spot. If you want to speed it up, best thing to do is to make a usable autopilot program first (or find a usable program someone else made), attempt to apply it to a real vehicle, and develop the system from there. The ground-car equivalent would be something like Google's Self-Driving Car project.

Again, if a flying car's what you want, equivalent vehicles are already available on the market, as light/ultralight aircraft. You just have to manually pilot them.

[ZooNamedGames]

Just now, shynung said:

It very well may be. Fully autonomous flight from apron to apron (jumbo jet parking spots) isn't here yet, much less car-parking-spot to car-parking-spot. If you want to speed it up, best thing to do is to make a usable autopilot program first (or find a usable program someone else made), attempt to apply it to a real vehicle, and develop the system from there. The ground-car equivalent would be something like Google's Self-Driving Car project.

Again, if a flying car's what you want, equivalent vehicles are already available on the market, as light/ultralight aircraft. You just have to manually pilot them.

I prefer a VTOL as they will catch on faster than something that needs an airport. I want something that can drive and park in your garage and then drive to an authorized clearing and take off. The flying should be the majority of the trip, not the driving. The automation is already in progress of development for the driving aspect and as to flying, we've had autopilots for a while, granted this isn't aircraft, but with development it should still work.

[shynung]

3 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I prefer a VTOL as they will catch on faster than something that needs an airport. I want something that can drive and park in your garage and then drive to an authorized clearing and take off. The flying should be the majority of the trip, not the driving. The automation is already in progress of development for the driving aspect and as to flying, we've had autopilots for a while, granted this isn't aircraft, but with development it should still work.

The thing about VTOLs is that they have terrible fuel economy, and for a very good reason: burning fuel just to hold the craft airborne doesn't get it anywhere. That is why most of light aircrafts aren't VTOLs; it enables them to have a smaller, cheaper engine.

If you want VTOL and good fuel economy, you have to provide hardware for both. That basically means a set of rotors for VTOL operations, and a set of wings and propellers for forward aerodynamic flight. One of the few vehicles that can combine both seamlessly is the V-22 Osprey, which rotates the engine nacelles and propellers upwards for VTOL, and forwards for flight. Most other designs have separate hardware systems to handle VTOL and forward flight, and they're about as complicated, if not more, than the V-22 solution.

Also, if storage space (=garage/hangar) is limited, you can make parts of the vehicle fold into itself. This does introduce additional complexity, however.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Works for me. Just need to get the costs down.

Well, getting the cost down from an estimated $500,000 to something affordable is a pretty tall order.

Especially given that it doesn't actually work, despite half a century of determined effort.  Has never flown successfully, even once. ("The only flight demonstrations have been hover tests performed in 2003 by a Skycar prototype that for insurance reasons was tethered to a crane.")

The closest equivalent to a "flying car" that I can think of-- in terms of "mass-produced, capable of transporting a few people with a somewhat car-like level of comfort, and can fly"-- is the Cessna 172, the most popular aircraft in history.  And even that costs ~$300K.

51 minutes ago, shynung said:

This is a Moller Neuera, developed by the same person that made the Moller Skycar that Red Iron Crown found. Same engines, just more of them, in a different configuration.

a.k.a. the Moller M200G Volantor.

Though calling it a "flying saucer" may be doing it a kindness, since as far as I can tell from reading its Wikipedia article, it can't actually fly, unless you count "get a short distance off the ground, using ground effect" as "flying".  ("Moller and his team claim that over 200 test flights of the M200G Neuera have already been conducted, though these flights rely on ground effect")

1 hour ago, ZooNamedGames said:

We put a 747 into space on the side of a rocket. I think we can manage making this work.

I'm not engineer so I can't finagle the details, but I know it can work with the right design.

Point being; we can make it work. If we can make [the shuttle] work; we can make a flying car that's cheap, safe and autonomous.

(quote edited by Snark for brevity)

No, I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way.

"If we can do <really hard thing>, it means we can also do <completely unrelated thing, which is much harder, but for completely different reasons>".

It is not the case that "you can do anything with enough engineering."  There are some things it's just not possible to do.

"Get the cost down by a factor of 20", for example, is generally not going to be possible for a product, unless the existing cost is wildly over-inflated because of neanderthal technology or pathologically bad economics.  "Make a computer 20 times cheaper" is reasonable, given the rapid pace of advancement in the technology.  Make a thing that's currently hand-crafted one at a time, and make it 20 times cheaper by introducing mass production, is another example.

But when it comes to fairly mature technologies that have already had advantages squeezed heavily out of them... no, you can't make those 20 times cheaper, not unless you posit some hypothetical magic future technology that there's absolutely no planning for.

For example, battery storage.  Make lithium-ion batteries cheaper with mass production?  Sure!  But find a different battery technology that can store an order of magnitude more energy in the same weight?  Not unless you make some new groundbreaking discovery.

Materials science is another one.  Steel costs money.  So does carbon fiber.  So does plastic.  We have plenty of advanced materials, that we have already gotten a lot of intense market-driven incentive over decades to get their costs down and their manufacturing well-oiled.  They already have the economies of scale.  There's no way to make them suddenly 20 times cheaper to manufacture.

I mean, suppose I came to you and said:  "Let's make cars 20 times cheaper!  Make a compact car that's just like what we have now, except it costs $1000 instead of $20,000.  After all, if we can put a man on the Moon, we can build a $1000 car."  ...Would I be credible?  No.

"If we can do X, we can do Y" statements are only valid if X and Y are in some way related.  "Space shuttle" and "affordable flying car" aren't, other than in the broad sense that "they go up in the sky", which would also apply to, say, kites.

[ZooNamedGames]

4 minutes ago, Snark said:

Well, getting the cost down from an estimated $500,000 to something affordable is a pretty tall order.

Especially given that it doesn't actually work, despite half a century of determined effort.  Has never flown successfully, even once. ("The only flight demonstrations have been hover tests performed in 2003 by a Skycar prototype that for insurance reasons was tethered to a crane.")

The closest equivalent to a "flying car" that I can think of-- in terms of "mass-produced, capable of transporting a few people with a somewhat car-like level of comfort, and can fly"-- is the Cessna 172, the most popular aircraft in history.  And even that costs ~$300K.

a.k.a. the Moller M200G Volantor.

Though calling it a "flying saucer" may be doing it a kindness, since as far as I can tell from reading its Wikipedia article, it can't actually fly, unless you count "get a short distance off the ground, using ground effect" as "flying".  ("Moller and his team claim that over 200 test flights of the M200G Neuera have already been conducted, though these flights rely on ground effect")

No, I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way.

"If we can do <really hard thing>, it means we can also do <completely unrelated thing, which is much harder, but for completely different reasons>".

It is not the case that "you can do anything with enough engineering."  There are some things it's just not possible to do.

"Get the cost down by a factor of 20", for example, is generally not going to be possible for a product, unless the existing cost is wildly over-inflated because of neanderthal technology or pathologically bad economics.  "Make a computer 20 times cheaper" is reasonable, given the rapid pace of advancement in the technology.  Make a thing that's currently hand-crafted one at a time, and make it 20 times cheaper by introducing mass production, is another example.

But when it comes to fairly mature technologies that have already had advantages squeezed heavily out of them... no, you can't make those 20 times cheaper, not unless you posit some hypothetical magic future technology that there's absolutely no planning for.

For example, battery storage.  Make lithium-ion batteries cheaper with mass production?  Sure!  But find a different battery technology that can store an order of magnitude more energy in the same weight?  Not unless you make some new groundbreaking discovery.

Materials science is another one.  Steel costs money.  So does carbon fiber.  So does plastic.  We have plenty of advanced materials, that we have already gotten a lot of intense market-driven incentive over decades to get their costs down and their manufacturing well-oiled.  They already have the economies of scale.  There's no way to make them suddenly 20 times cheaper to manufacture.

I mean, suppose I came to you and said:  "Let's make cars 20 times cheaper!  Make a compact car that's just like what we have now, except it costs $1000 instead of $20,000.  After all, if we can put a man on the Moon, we can build a $1000 car."  ...Would I be credible?  No.

 

So it's impossible? Oh ok. Pack my bags, seems you've debunked it.

I was just saying that we as an engineering species have overcome engineering spectacles much more complex than this. So why can't we add this to the long list of our achievements?

[Red Iron Crown]

25 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I was just saying that we as an engineering species have overcome engineering spectacles much more complex than this. So why can't we add this to the long list of our achievements?

Mostly for the reasons already mentioned in thread, plus that this isn't an engineering challenge so much as an economic one.

It is simply not possible to make an aircraft as cheap to operate as a ground vehicle of similar capacity, full stop. Even if you get manufacturing costs down to the same level (and that's a huge if), the ground vehicle will always, always win on energy costs. Add in VTOL capability and the ability to function as a competent ground vehicle and it only gets worse.

[ZooNamedGames]

2 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Mostly for the reasons already mentioned in thread, plus that this isn't an engineering challenge so much as an economic one.

It is simply not possible to make an aircraft as cheap to operate as a ground vehicle of similar capacity, full stop. Even if you get manufacturing costs down to the same level (and that's a huge if), the ground vehicle will always, always win on energy costs. Add in VTOL capability and the ability to function as a competent ground vehicle and it only gets worse.

Money will undoubtedly be the downfall of our species.

[DaMachinator]

Maybe not this, but...

44 minutes ago, Snark said:

we can build a $1000 car

The Ford Model T cost about $3000 in today's money brand new when it was in production.

[Red Iron Crown]

10 minutes ago, DaMachinator said:

Maybe not this, but...

The Ford Model T cost about $3000 in today's money brand new when it was in production.

We could build Model Ts now for even cheaper, given our mass production techniques are more mature. Very few people would want them, though.